


Tourniquet (part 2/2)

by toluenesister



Series: Dissolve and absolve [5]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight (2008)
Genre: Bondage, Captivity, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Suicide thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:33:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1580297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toluenesister/pseuds/toluenesister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final part of the series of stories beginning with Branding. </p><p>Comments make me unbelievably happy, just putting that out there!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tourniquet (part 2/2)

His awareness suspended, Bruce spins slowly in the parched planes of his mind, watching. Nothing holds a discernible shape, there are no sounds, no voices. All is ashen and suffocating. Yet in the thickness of it all he can sense growths and densities. They’re connected with a net of conduits carrying tension from one to another. In this spot he chooses for himself, there’s nowhere for him to go, he can only look downward. He’s ensconced securely in his tunnel vision.

 _His dad has nothing interesting to say lately_ , he answers the Joker’s question from many hours ago. He’s gone along with his sleep deprivation. Bruce misses the sound of his voice, though. For a second there, a part of him did feel grateful for his judgment. Being explicitly told he’s failed by the person he wanted to honor the most felt liberating. Being told to die meant being told to come face him. After all these years of being apart, becoming subject to paternal rage under these circumstances seemed almost enticing.

If you choose to believe there’s a way to connect with your loved ones after death, maybe there's also a way to suffer their disappointment. Maybe that’s what Bruce’s dying is designed to be. During the eight years he had known him, his father did not yell at him once. Not once. He understood a child makes mistakes and needs to learn from them, so he explained his mistakes to him. He showed him how the world could hurt him, and how he needed to be careful and responsible. Bruce did hear him yell at someone over the phone once. Maybe that’s where his brain is getting the blueprints for reconstructing his voice.  

But he’s convinced somehow the voice was real. It’s an attractive prospect in more than one way. It would mean his father is still out there somewhere, watching over him, still caring about him enough to barge into his head and tell him off. Maybe he knows first-hand that bullets aren’t the worst that could happen to you. Maybe it’s his father’s way of looking out for him. Maybe he’s trying to show him the best route out of it all.

Too bad there’s something much warmer distracting him, tugging him to the left. That’s where the Joker’s sleeping head is resting. Bruce’s senses are tangled into a shapeless mass at the borderlands of his mind, but they start to register form, temperature and weight, translating them. Finally, they force him to open his eyes to the twilight surrounding him. It’s evening. Or early morning. He has no sense of time, couldn’t place it ever since he woke up here the first time, but something tells him they’ve been in this state for at least five hours. He’s starting to acknowledge his bladder again, but not badly enough to stir the Joker awake. The man is drooling onto his shoulder in his sleep. Bruce doesn’t mind. It’s worse. He finds it adorable.

He loses connection to his reason that tried its best to paint his sentence with roses. The Joker sways his attention over with a single sleepy mumble. He’s waking up on his own. Bruce watches his outline as he’s lifting his head, moving against the backdrop of badly lit furnishings. He can make out his features to an extent, and he sees he’s confused. Then panicked. Then, as soon as he senses the chest beneath him is still moving—relieved. He quickly grabs Bruce’s face in his hands and inspects him.

“I still have my tongue,” Bruce tells him, smiling.

“You better,” Joker rasps, his voice clearly not fully awake yet. “Did I fall asleep?”

“Yeah. Dribbled all over me.”

“Oh,  _damn_ ,” he mutters, rubbing his forehead. “Do I need to change you?”

Bruce laughs. “No, it’s alright.”

“No, that’s just…” He touches the moist spot hesitantly. “Eugh, no. C’mon, let’s get you out of this.”

He climbs off Bruce’s lap and stands up, the sudden head rush forcing him to squish his face into his hands until the pressure evens out. Again, Bruce finds it adorable, and knowing it doesn’t sound any alarms in his head. It’s an interesting phenomenon, come to think of it. Instead of feeling shame, he’s beginning to be analytical of himself, without denying the emotions that strike him from all directions whenever he’s in the same room with the person who's made his life into living hell, while making it feel like heaven.

Joker disappears somewhere briefly, reappearing with a dark bundle under his arm, which must be Bruce’s new shirt. He's unchaining him, cuffing his hands in front of his body again, repeating all the steps from before, and Bruce knows the drill by now. Once more he’s being led to the bathroom at gunpoint. He plods inside, squinting at the light, and stops in front of the toilet.

“Just give me a second,” he says as he starts unzipping his pants.

“Okay,” the Joker croaks and clears his throat, rubbing his eye with his free hand. The gun is still ready. 

It occurs to Bruce how comfortable it feels to be here like this. It doesn’t seem like what it is. He didn’t ask for permission to pee, he’s just doing it, and asking never even crossed his mind. Then again, the Joker never suggested he needed his permission for anything. The man is resting his back against the ‘dressing & undressing’ wall, holding up the tranquilizer nonchalantly like it’s a toy. He’s combing out his hair with his fingers. There’s no tension to be found.

Once he’s done shaking, zipping up and flushing, Bruce turns to have a better look at him in the light. His eyes are puffy, and his face holds a soft air of drowsiness about it, but he appears much less strung out than when Bruce first laid his eyes on him after being brought here. He’s also smiling. The primed gun seems to pose no threat. As if it were only there to cushion Bruce’s fall should he trip.

When it’s obvious Bruce is finished, the Joker pries himself off the wall to make space for the man and beckons at him. Bruce walks up to the spot and snaps one of the metal rings around his left wrist.

“I don’t need to do my legs, right?”

“Well,  _yeah_. Unless I salivated on your pants too, somehow.”

“No, just my shoulder.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?” the Joker asks with a tinge of reprimand. “You really don’t have to endure me slobbering all over you for hours on end,” he continues as he locks Bruce’s arms in and out, quickly changing his shirt. This one is the same design, only dark blue.

“Honestly?”

“Please.”

“I thought it was cute.” Bruce grins, turning to look him in the eye.

Joker stares at him for a few heavy seconds, stricken silent.

“How dare you,” he says finally, though his voice betrays nothing but amusement. “Now you’re gonna do some penalty standing while I go and  _go,_ ” he adds, marching to the toilet, leaving him cuffed to the wall. He unzips his pants and starts pissing while Bruce watches him out the corner of his eye. There’s nothing extraordinary to the sight—another human facet to add to the catalog.

“I could use some standing, to be honest, after what, a whole day of you in my lap? You’re not exactly weightless. I might develop sitting sores.”

“I’ll get you some ointment,” the Joker sighs, zipping up.

Bruce chuckles. “No, but I’m serious… is it okay if I stand for a while?” he asks in a slighter voice.

Joker rolls his eyes. He flushes the toilet and turns to face him. He’s only feigning annoyance; his gaze carries nothing but good-natured chagrin.

“You still ask for permission, after all,” he says. “Of  _course_  you can stand. As long as you want, whenever you want.” He walks up to Bruce and frees him from the wall, distancing himself quickly with the gun ready. He makes a few steps backwards until he reaches the bathtub, and then seats himself on its edge. “Stand, walk, do yoga, whatever you like,” he says, muffling a yawn.

Bruce slowly moves away from the wall and drags his feet until he’s in front of the Joker, keeping himself far enough for the man to remain unalarmed. The easiness he felt just minutes ago is now speckled with the familiar urge to be led. He’s feeling awkward, being left to his own resources, but he decides to tackle it head on and analyze it.

“I’ll walk myself then,” he says, cocking his eyebrow. Joker nods and smiles. His demeanor isn’t changing, remaining at a constant level of placidity. If Bruce were to map out every emotional state the Joker’s shown him so far, this here would have to be charted as another extreme, being the polar opposite of his previous tensed out, burned out episode. Maybe this is what’s making it awkward. Joker is feeling comfortable with him, and Bruce has experienced a glimpse of it within himself, being completely comfortable around the Joker for a second before it fell under his scrutiny and shriveled in shame.

He wanders around the bathroom slowly, keeping his eyes on the man. The clinking of his cuff chains doesn’t bother him. Finally, he stands still and gives in to his body’s whimsy, stretching his arms, gradually raising them over his head, feeling the pleasant tug of muscle. He quickly becomes dizzy and presses his head against the nearby tiled wall to wait it out.

“Yeah, you need to walk yourself more often,” the Joker giggles, and when Bruce lifts his eyelids, he immediately squirms under his gaze.

“Are you finding me cute right now?” he asks sourly.

“I can deal as well as I can take, Brucey.”

Bruce stares at him without a word. Joker tilts his head, trying to latch on to anything, but he can’t decipher him.

“You don’t like it when I call you ‘Brucey’? Is that it?”

“I was just trying to figure it out myself,” the man answers, his voice flat. “Beside you, only one person used to call me that. My mother.”

There are so many ways the Joker could turn what he’s just said against him, but somehow, he chooses not to. He leaves the slight smile on his mouth, not even brushing against ridicule. “I can stop if you want,” he says simply. Bruce’s eyes bore into him, looking for the man who joked about ‘Rachel’ being his safe word.

“I don’t think I mind,” Bruce says after a moment of ringing silence. “I think you’re similar in how  _unconditional_  you are with me. So it makes sense, sort of.”

“Similar… to your mother?”

Bruce nods. “Only in that respect, though. Well, that, and you also wear lipstick,” he laughs quietly. “It makes so many things that much clearer,” he keeps thinking aloud, resuming his slow journey across the bathroom floor, stretching his upper body through various inclinations of his torso.

“The lipstick?”

Bruce snickers and gives him a slant look. “You know what’s being said about early childhood trauma… how it arrests development of certain parts of the brain,” he says.

“I might know.”

“If you experience trauma at a young age, a part of you never gets to grow up. You don’t move beyond it, suspended in that one bad day.”

“The brain usually grows around the damaged tissue and shuts it out,” the Joker picks up the exchange after a few beats.

“Which doesn’t mean it’s not there anymore. That it can’t be triggered and tapped into.” Bruce stares at him with blank eyes.

“So I tapped into your damaged goods. Is that it? That why you get all docile and childlike ‘round me?” His comfort appears to be slowly running out. “Okay then,” he sighs and lowers his head, the old incisiveness returning steadily to his eyes. “It would mean not all is lost, y’know. You don’t necessarily care about _me_ , you’re just afflicted with your own rotten brain cells. Hold on to that,” he adds in a softer voice.

Suddenly he appears so small to Bruce, hunched, his legs jutting out across the floor, squeezing the gun in his hand like a shield. He tries to recall him from way before, the man who raped him and carved ‘Joker was here’ into his ass. He tries to connect the sight before his eyes to everything the Joker has ever done. It leaves him feeling nothing of the sort he would have wanted to.

“No… no, I think my whole brain’s gone bad after all,” he says with a smile.

“Oh, is that your learned deduction? Based on what?”

“Just looking at you.”

“So, describe what you see,” the Joker hisses as if daring him.

Bruce keeps staring, hardly blinking, and his breath falters until his eyes veer and he starts dragging his feet again.

“You don’t want to. Good. Hold on to that  _reluctance_ , then. Cherish it. Distance yourself from me in any way you can, and you just might find a way out of this.”

He stops walking to give the man a glance, but his eyes end up glued to the pitiful sight. He’s wished numerous times his arms were free throughout his stay here, but the edge of this need grows keener the longer he looks. 

“Don’t say that,” he chuckles. “You know damn well there’s no convincing me, you said it yourself.”

Joker appears to be brimming with something, but he just swallows it down, giving Bruce himself at his most detached.

“I don’t want you to be here. I don’t wanna keep you here. I want you to be alive and happy, but not like  _this. This_  is just the only thing I can offer you at this point, which I’m  _not_ crazy about,” he utters in monotone as if trying not to listen to his own words.

“So you’re trying to find straws for me to grasp at.”

“Yep.”

“There’s no point. And let me tell you why,” Bruce says, standing right in front of him. “I’m trying to think about everything you’ve ever done when I look at you, and I run into a wall. What you did to all those people—no matter how hard I try to turn it around, it’s not what you  _are_  to me anymore. And judging from how my brain  _percolates_  whenever you’re around, well, it might be true you tapped into my ‘damaged goods’. And then you kept going, until I ended up here, because I realized I’m not passive about you. I don’t just substitute you for some clump of brain tissue that got yanked out of order when I was eight years old.” He takes a slow step forward, observing how the Joker’s trigger finger tenses up, how his eyes widen. “And now I’m in a place where every single part of me actively seeks you out. I might like it when you cuddle me like a child and sing me lullabies, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy licking up your tears as I was taking you apart with my own hands. I might understand what you felt… the first time. I might feel it too.”

“You’re not giving me any hope here, are you,” the Joker says tightly. “Although I am flattered,” he adds with a smirk.

“As far as straws are concerned… I don’t want any.”

“Well then, what do you want?” finally, his voice breaks. “If you’re capable of giving these long-winded self-exploratory spiels, why can’t you just talk some sense into yourself?”

“Because I’m unable to put any blame on you. I ended up heaping it all on myself, as usual. And it’s too heavy, too dense this time. And I’m tired. There’s no redeeming factor left in me for any attempt to work through this to make sense, except for the part that wants me to kill myself. It’s the only speck I can recognize myself in anymore.”

They fall silent for a leaden moment, until the Joker’s cackling barges into Bruce’s thoughts, startling him. The man hides his face in his hand as he keeps laughing himself into breathless wheezing. When he finally lifts his head, Bruce sees that he’s crying.

“Is that so?” he asks, and his eyes glisten with fury. “The only  _speck_  you recognize yourself in is the sum of ways this world has fucked you over in and made feel guilty for?” His voice is growing more and more shrill as he slowly stands up. “It’s. Not.  _You._   _You_  are the guy who  _seethed_  in anger as he put that gun in his mouth,” he keeps growling as he approaches him. “You’re the guy who  _basked_  in my squeals while sucking up my tears. You’re  _that_  guy, Bruce.” His face softens as he arrives at a distance he won’t dare to breach. “What you want to do isn’t suicide. It’s plain murder, you know. You want to kill that guy. I thought you weren’t into that kinda stuff.”

Bruce stands still, trying to control his breath. Joker is so close, if he threw his arms up and hooked them around his neck, he could pull him in and hold him. That’s the first thing that comes to his mind. The idea to use this opportunity to try and knock him out arrives several seconds later, but the man takes two steps back before he can convince himself to act on it.

“Things aren’t all that clear-cut from where I’m standing,” he says. “Good thing I have you as my moral gauge.”

Joker appears to relax a little, leaving him looking simply exhausted. The languor that accompanied him upon waking up is long gone now, but he attempts to give Bruce a smile.

“Y’know, maybe you were right. Maybe we really should just avoid the subject.”

“Yeah. We were doing so well.” Bruce smiles back, feeling a shy string of warmth reconnecting them the longer they look at each other. “I think I’ve walked myself enough.”

“Alright,” Joker nods. There are still tears slowly crawling down his hickey-mottled neck. Bruce feels the familiar dull ache at the sight. “It’s time for your juice anyway,” he says, earning himself a chuckle.

“You should eat something, too.” Bruce looks over his shoulder as he marches back to his chair. The room has gotten completely dark, and the Joker employs the light seeping in from the bathroom to keep track of his own movements chaining the man down.

“I don’t know, I don’t feel it,” he drawls. When Bruce is secure, he walks to the kitchen, turning the light on. He pours a glass of juice, sticks a straw in it, grabs a chair and returns, placing it at Bruce’s side. He sits in it and offers him the drink.

“What?” he asks when the man keeps staring in silence. “I don’t want you to get sores. Drink it up.”

“I’m not going to drink it until you eat something.”

“I’m not going to eat anything until you drink this,” the Joker mocks his tone, tilting his head left and right.

“I said it first,” Bruce knits his eyebrows, but the smile slips through the cracks.

“I said it second.”

He closes his mouth shut as the straw prods at it and faces away. Finally, the Joker erupts laughing and slides his fingers in his hair to ruffle them up. He rises to his feet, places the glass on top of his chair and begrudgingly drags his feet to the kitchen, throwing Bruce a slant look. When he returns, he’s holding a bowl of cereal. He tries to reach for the glass to put it somewhere else and make space for himself, but Bruce stops him.

“Don’t worry about my sores,” he says. Joker stares at him, unsure, but yet again he loses out to Bruce’s pull. It coaxes him in, inviting him to seat himself in his lap once more.

“But tell me when you get uncomfortable, okay?” the Joker mumbles.

Bruce can’t seem to wipe that smile off his face. He watches him start eating, and he’s grateful to him for not dwelling on his insistence. He genuinely wants the Joker to take care of himself, there’s no denying that. He also wants him to keep his wits about him, as sharp as possible. Next time he slips up and gets close enough to create a chance for Bruce, he'd better be quick on his feet. Bruce really doesn’t want to have his way.

He concentrates on the warmth the man’s body provides him with and gives in to a little bliss. He looks on as spoonfuls of colorful, sugary grains disappear in the scarred mouth. Joker only gives him a sporadic glance every few bites, and each one intensifies the amusement readable in his face. Finally, he just puts the bowl down and smiles, his mouth full.

“Now, stop looking at me like that,” he says coquettishly once he’s done chewing.

“Like what?” Bruce chuckles.

He regards him quietly, the corners of his lips curled up _._  “Like a doting grandma watching her grandkid gobble up the seventh serving of her rhubarb pie.”

Bruce starts to laugh, drawing the Joker a little closer, forcing his hand into his dark hair once more, guiding it as it pets him playfully. The madman has no control of himself in moments like this. He keeps smiling. He puts considerable effort into pulling himself away lest he acts up on his urge to throw the bowl aside and shower Bruce with kisses. He’s so close to finishing his meal, it would be a waste.

“Here. All done,” he says at last, presenting the emptied bowl to him. “Now it’s your turn.” He places it on the chair he's brought and grabs the glass, bringing it to the man’s mouth. Bruce doesn’t change the wattage of his gaze despite his request. It still rouses swarming butterflies in the Joker’s stomach as he slowly sucks the juice up.

“Now you look like I’m on my eighth serving,” Bruce notices between sips, smirking. Joker beams up, pinching his cheek.

“Who’s granny’s little bubby?” he chirps. “Drink up, sweetie.”  

Bruce laughs again. He finishes his drink, his eyes smiling, but he’s starting to feel something cold and heavy creep up his spine. The Joker’s warmth immediately cracks it up into tiny little slivers, letting air in, quickening his arrival at making a certain decision. If he is to have his way at any point in the future, it requires one more betrayal.

“I need you to do something,” he begins. “I… have a tracker in the back of my neck.”

Joker watches him without a word and puts the empty glass next to his bowl. A slight inclination of his head prompts Bruce to speak on.

“You need to take it out, unless you want Alfred to find…”  _us_ “me here.”

“Oh? How come he hasn’t found you already?” A shadow flits over the Joker’s eyes. “What’s been keeping him from making sure you don’t get yourself in trouble? Some legal guardian, eh?” he scoffs.

“I, uh, sent him away,” Bruce says, clearing his throat. Speaking of Alfred opens a whole can of yet untackled worms. “I’ve been in touch with him through all… this.” He falls quiet for a while, feeling the Joker’s stare drill into him. “And yesterday morning… I called him, told him I’m close to, you know… ending this whole thing. I think I made it sound like I was close to getting myself in the clear to be finally able to catch you and turn you in. That he should just sit tight for a couple more days and try not to contact me.”

“That’s not very nice, lying to an old man like this,” the Joker grimaces, but there’s no weight to his words.

“No, it’s not.” Not even a little. Bruce loses out to something, and he didn’t see it coming until it just spilled out and the Joker’s hands were all over it.

“No, no, you think I’m judging you here? Sheesh,” he giggles, wiping his tears away for him. “Me of all people, seriously? Now, don’t cry, sweetheart, I’ll take care of it. He’ll have a couple more days of relative peace, and then we’ll figure it out,” he goes on, speaking in a calm, lilting tone, holding Bruce’s face in his hands. “You’ve got enough on your plate as it is, you don’t need to worry about it.” He ends it with pressing a long, sweet kiss to his forehead, and then climbs off his lap, hurrying to the bathroom where he spends a few noisy seconds before he reappears holding something that looks like disinfectant and some wound dressing materials. Then, he gives Bruce a smile in passing and paces quickly to the box-strewn area behind the man’s field of vision. When he’s back before his eyes, he’s still smiling, placing the collected items on the chair next to the empty bowl and glass.

“Where is it?” he asks, turning a scalpel in his hands.

“Just beneath my hairline. You’ll feel it,” Bruce says, trying to even out his voice. Every time the Joker displays this foreign compassion for him, it leaves him feeling as if his guts have had a few rounds in a blender along with a hefty dose of undeniable happiness. It provides him with a sense of safety he’s having increasing difficulty deeming false the longer he stays here. It might be just part of the Joker’s concerted effort to keep tapping into the damaged goods and sustain the needed level of docility in him, but even when he spells it out to himself, he’s not craving it any less, and it doesn’t feel any less genuine.

Warm fingertips inspect the back of his neck gently, pressing down until they find a small irregularity. Bruce sucks in breath and nods. “That’s it,” he says.

There’s something wet swiping over the targeted area. He’s being disinfected. He hears the snapping sound of latex gloves and then the click of a lighter, meaning the Joker must be holding the blade over its flame. He’s not hesitating; soon enough, Bruce feels the first careful incision, and then a series of focused movements, excavating the device out of his flesh, disinfecting again, applying butterfly stitches, dressing the wound. It doesn’t take longer than a couple of minutes. He can’t see how the Joker’s fared with the procedure, but he feels he’s been much more careful than Bruce could ever be with his own body.

The memory of Alfred teasing him for his poor self-suturing skills knocks around his head for a few dark seconds. Then, there’s the tracker, bloodied, being presented to him on the Joker’s latex-clad palm.

“So, now what?” the man asks, his lips slightly parted, theatrical uncertainty painted on his face.

“Just… smash it,” Bruce says.

“O _kay._ ” Joker picks it up daintily with two fingers, drops it to the floor and jumps on it once, then four more times for good measure. He stares at the crushed pieces of metal on the wooden boards and gives it one last stomp just to be sure.

“I think that’s enough,” Bruce chuckles, the relief overshadowing his guilt, at least temporarily.

“Yeah.” The madman pulls the gloves off his hands and carries them to the kitchen area to throw them in a trashcan.

He’s got a trashcan. Somehow, the fact earns itself a place amongst all the human things Bruce would have never suspected of him. There’s a bit of commotion coming from the Joker’s direction, and when he reemerges, he’s armed with a brush and a dustpan, which is too much even for Bruce. He watches him whisk up the remains of his tracker off the floor and throw it away.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” he says, brushing his hands off in a job-well-done gesture as he comes back to Bruce.

“Never had you pegged for the tidy type,” the man smirks. “Is this place even yours? Or did you just oust the previous resident and took over their stuff?” he asks, tilting his head up to look at him, feeling the stinging tug of his fresh wound.

“I… might have evicted a certain antipathetic mobster out of his safe house, yeah,” the Joker admits, his hands clasped. “But the  _stuff_ … I bought most of it. I didn’t want anything he had his sticky hams all over, y’know.”

“You did a whole lot of preparing before you brought me here,” Bruce broaches the subject that’s been gnawing at him for some time now. “You couldn’t have arranged all this in the time I was unconscious.”

“Very astute, Bruce.” Joker gives him a light sneer. “I might have spent a few days just, uh, visualizing. And when I visualize, I tend to do it while I actually _do_ it. And then I just open my eyes and… there it is,” he says with a flourish.

“You bought me clothes, you got me my body wash and my shampoo, you got me all this fancy organic stuff, all the rigs, all the… facilities,” Bruce lists, not knowing where he’s headed. Neither does the Joker. He keeps staring at him, his eyebrows raised. “I’m just… very impressed.” He strives not to say  _touched_.

“Well, it’s the  _least_  I could do,” the man mutters, seating himself back in Bruce’s lap. He can tell he’s more than welcome here now. “It’s become a compulsion, y’know. To  _cultivate_  whatever this is. I’ve never really been driven to do anything… ever. Whatever I did, I just did.  And then  _you_ came into my life,” he smiles, patting Bruce’s cheek. “You’ve become the common denominator of my every action. And I’m not sure how I feel about it, to be honest.”

Bruce smiles, leaning into his hand. “I bet it’s a major setback, for such a free spirit like yourself,” he says, giving his voice a slightly thespian timbre. “Suddenly, the very fabric of what you used to consider  _yourself_  is fraying before your eyes until it assumes the shape of something like me.”

“You’re so good with words, Bruce.”

“Well, that’s what’s been happening to me. I guessed you might be going through something similar. You were right. When push comes to shove, we’re not that different.”

“No, we’re not… but I’m at an advantage here, aren’t I. I don’t have to go through any moral conundrums, I have nothing I’d have to forget or  _forgive_  first. I can spoil you all I want, no holds barred.”

“I said it once, I’ll say it again…” Bruce starts, feeling this conversation erode the basis of him, elevating him to higher, distanced areas of thinking where everything is so much smaller. “I’m no longer qualified to dispense any kind of forgiveness. I don’t get to be  _angry_  with what you’ve done. Not anymore.”

“Oh, because you’re such a base, wretched creature with no pretense to all the good you ever got from all the noble people in your life. I know, sweetheart, I know. I agree, in a way.” Joker brings his arms around his neck, smiling at him serenely. “But whatever good they had for you, in the end just wasn’t good enough, eh? All these  _conditions_ , restrictions, limitations. Even though in your head that’s precisely what made it the  _pinnacle_  of good. Because you had to fight for it, prove yourself worthy. Compete. Well… all the good you get from me, you get to enjoy  _exclusively_. It’s all yours,  _designed_  to be yours. Don’t ever try to force yourself away from enjoying it.”

“I’m not. You’d force it on me anyway.”

“Oh, you feel you’re being forced to enjoy what I give you?”

“I  _am_  kind of tied down.”

“Yes, you are. And for someone tied down, you’re being pretty cooperative. Pretty responsive.”

Bruce smiles and hangs his head, waiting in silence until the Joker brings himself closer, close enough to hear him whisper things he himself doesn’t want to hear.

“I don’t want to die,” he says. “So, just between you and me… thank you.” He feels the man tighten around him, his warmth tiding in. “Before I fall back down, I want you to know that. I’m grateful. And I do want everything you want to give me.” He presses his cheek to the scarred one, his sight getting blurry, his head floating. His voice gains strength. “You said you love me. I want that.”

The look Joker gives him is a thinly veiled mix of hurt and defeat. It’s obvious he never wanted neither Bruce nor himself to catch that little slip.

“And what’s gonna happen when you fall back down?”

“I’ll get out of here,” Bruce smiles. “I will. I know it. You know it. It’s going to happen, one way or another. Until then, I just… I want it.”

Joker smiles back, his eyes not quite reflecting it. “You got it.” He drapes himself all over Bruce, wishing he could just suspend it all and solidify like this.

***

The subject they’d agreed to avoid wasn’t mentioned for the remainder of the night. When Bruce asked, he was given the precise hour. He now knows the timeframe of all the happenings up until now. Joker had allowed himself a six-hour long nap, spanning from four p.m. to ten p.m. He knows what time it was when he arrived here, too. It was three a.m., meaning the amount of rest he got was tremendous. And yet he still feels exhaustion lining his muscles.

But he can’t sleep. He lies on his back, restless, quantifying and qualifying all the hours he’s already wasted not making the slightest effort to break out of here.

They both decided to go to bed when it started to dawn. They spent the night just talking. Simple, trifling things in comparison to what they were omitting. Joker would answer all the questions Bruce had for him, and he seemed happy to do so. Bruce now knows where all his new clothes came from, how the Joker planned and carried out the changes to this place’s interior design, how he went about procuring all of the furnishings.

He uses silicone molds to fill out the scars in order to make his way through the world. He even put them on for him to demonstrate, along with the foreign tonus of his facial muscles creating an entirely different set of features. Bruce wouldn’t recognize him in the streets if he hadn’t seen him without his makeup beforehand. He had trouble connecting it even with this prior knowledge.

But he took it off before Bruce had a chance to grow accustomed to this mask. The face now resting beside him is betraying its owner even in his sleep. The silicone-fixed one looked relaxed in a way that just didn’t seem possible with the set of lines and shapes the Joker’s looks normally consist of. There’s a certain tension unifying it all, even when the man himself is at his most undone. Thinking of it, Bruce could only compare it to his own facial disguise he’d practiced for hours on end until he had it mastered. It enabled him unrestrained mobility throughout all of Gotham while remaining unrecognized when he had no means to physically disguise himself. Even Alfred admitted he was taken with how the impression left the spectator with no choice but to think he was a completely different person.

They have that in common; having to employ complex tactics in order to simply move about the city undisturbed, each for different reasons, yet the principle still remains the same. They cannot function freely as themselves. Whatever ‘ _themselves_ ’ might actually mean in their case.

Bruce keeps staring at the sleeping man snuggled up to him, the early afternoon light denying his face any ambiguity. He’s static, exposed, breathing evenly, letting Bruce’s gaze hold him whole with no consequence. And it’s now obvious the sight doesn’t make him feel anything but fondness. He likes those freckles. He likes how soft his lips look. He likes his curly hair, his yet undyed honey blond roots, and the greenish strands they segue into. It’s definite—there’s not a single bad string struck when he looks at him. There’s a whole ensemble of good ones, and no remorse to be found.

He tries to lift his fingers as much as the plaster allows and touches the Joker’s thigh stretched alongside his own. It’s the only way he could ever place his hands on the man in these circumstances, so he cherishes the warmth seeping in through his fingertips. He brushes them gently down the resting flesh covered in fabric, allowing some voice to his burning need to touch him, acknowledging how restricted he’ll always be until it ends. His fingers press down ever so slightly.

It takes just a little longer for the Joker to start waking up. He moves against Bruce, his temple pressed to his shoulder, his arms springing up slowly, stretching, then falling back down on the warm surface they arose from. Finally, his eyes crack open and he lifts himself, propping up on his elbow, looking down. Bruce smiles at him.

“ _Still_  have my tongue. And you didn’t drool on me,” he says.

Joker doesn’t respond. He’s just looking, returning the smile. His dark circles have diminished significantly; he appears well rested, all things considered.

“How long was I asleep?” he asks groggily.

“What time is it?”

Joker looks over his shoulder and grabs a wristwatch from a night table next to the bed, checking the hour. It’s Bruce’s own. He was wearing it the night he was brought here.

“1 p.m.”

“Eight hours.”

“What?” He darts up, bracing his head with both hands in theatrical panic. He keeps still for a few beats as if suspended in his deep shock. “But you also slept, right?”

“Only a little.” Bruce tosses his gaze across the room, registering its scape, now made clear with indulgent sunlight. “I got enough rest before, so I wasn’t  _that_  tired. I just lounged around… staring at you,” he says as he looks back up with a smirk.

“I suppose ‘that’s creepy’ coming from  _this_  guy would be a riot.” Joker scratches his head, pointing at his chest with his other hand. “But you were well within your right to return fire.”

“You stared at me in my sleep before?”

“Well, yeah. I always do. What else would I do. You  _are_  quite an eyeful, y’know,” he says, pinching his cheek.

Bruce takes a while to decide whether he should say it or not.

“Right back at you,” he budges.

The Joker’s flushed state in reaction to this becomes lost in his subsequent franticness. He goes about getting Bruce off the bed, just as before, just as competent, just as focused. The clinking of chains is becoming something close to domestic bustle. They’re growing accustomed to the circumstances faster than they’d both wagered.

They both use the toilet, they use the shower, all according to the manual, no aberrations to the blueprints. Cuffs snapping, clothes rustling, chains announcing the motions. The warmth of touch suffusing it all, leaving its imprint underneath the foremost layer of calmness. But this time, Bruce’s reactions bear different markings. He sees the Joker right before him, fastening him back to the chair, and the memory of his skin doesn’t leave, just like before. But unlike before, Bruce isn’t desperate to have him. There’s no aching, he no longer thinks of his touch as an elusive means to escape. He now thinks of the Joker’s body as an irremovable part of his reality; it has its rightful place in there.

Clean and dressed in yet another iteration of the clothes the Joker bought for him in bulk (as Bruce himself often does), he feels fine. Despite not truly sleeping alongside him, he did give in to other kinds of rest. The exhaustion lingering in his muscles is still there, but his mind and his eyes aren’t stinging with deprivation.

After the compulsory glass of juice, he’s now being offered the promised solid food—a salad, easy to digest vegetables, mostly lettuce. He shouldn’t end up puking it up. There’s no telling if the Joker’s nutritional knowledge in this regard is experience-based or learned from outside sources. It doesn’t really matter right now. His hand is holding the fork, unobtrusive, hanging at Bruce’s mouth without a trace of coercion until he chooses to eat it.

Chewing feels good after a week’s recess. The fresh taste is invigorating, and once more it feels valid to accept it from him. It’s also a relief to see the man fairly stabilized; his eyes aren’t bloodshot anymore, and his movements suggest regained strength and not just adrenaline fumes he’s been running on. Bruce wonders how long he kept going without sleep prior to this. Then, he reminds himself in these circumstances it’s okay to just ask.

“When did you decide you’d bring me here?” he poses the yet unanswered question between bites.

“Oh, you know.” Joker waves the fork dismissively and jabs it into the colorful mess. His gestures are wryly elegant. “Right out of the gate. But if we wanna talk about that, we’re gonna talk about that thing we don’t talk about, so…”

“Well, the unavoidable is hard to avoid,” Bruce says. Joker remains quiet, eyeballing him with a crooked smile, the fork stabbed into some lettuce. He lifts it up and brings it to Bruce’s mouth, letting him have another bite.

“When I left, a week ago,” he starts, turning his face down as if concentrating on the bowl. “I saw that you’re, uh… that you have all the markings of someone we’d call a high risk patient in the field.”

“The  _field_?”

“Well, that’s what they called  _me_  in Arkham.” Joker rolls his eyes with a barely noticeable, displeased shake of his head. “Violent patients, or patients on the s-word watch and the like.”

“You don’t need to say ‘s-word’,” Bruce laughs.

“Just eat your salad.” Joker offers him another forkful. “I noticed you were honestly thinking of… killing yourself by the time we were done. Before we started, you did mention it, but you didn’t seem convinced. I suppose I managed to convince you.” He lifts his gaze. It’s level, but weighted. “I just gambled, y’know, that you would need time for this thought to fester into action. I kept checking up on you, tracking you, all the time you were moping around in that shipping yard of yours. I was redecorating in the meantime. There were days… when the dot that was your phone on my screen wouldn’t move for hours on end. This is when I would just stop looking at it. I kept smashing the tiles, y’know. Keeping my hands busy. Then I’d just see you’re still charging the phone, and I would, uh…” He stirs up the salad for a few seconds, sticks the fork up and clears his throat. “I would just sit here and, I guess I was crying? Maybe. I  _wanted_  to stop myself, stop preparing this place, looking at the dot. So that’s why I didn’t come get you right away. I hoped I could keep myself from doing it.”

“You couldn’t.”

“Well, of course I couldn’t. Who would let such a cutie pie go to waste like that?” He flashes a grin Bruce is most familiar with. The one that derided him from his multiple screens as he tried to figure out the nature of whatever he thought he wanted to capture. Seeing it back in its rightful place is a relief. He wants to see the Joker being in charge of both of them.

“And then what?” Bruce asks.

Joker leans away a few inches, licking his lips. “I saw you were on the move, so I left to see what you were up to. I caught up with you, I saw you buy a gun in some back alley from some shady guy, and I thought it wasn’t like you, so I kept following you back to that place. I saw what you were going to do.” His voice verges breaking, but remains fairly monotone. “And I just... didn’t want to watch that. You know how it goes after that,” he smiles despite the darkness creeping up in his eyes. “I brought you here to let you cool down. Give you some rest.”

“Looks like it’s rubbed off on you.” Bruce smiles serenely. Joker sighs and sucks on the side of his mouth. He brings the last of the salad to the man’s lips, watching it disappear before he can finally place the bowl on top of the chair still sitting next to them since last night.

“I didn’t sleep. Like, at all. All week, I was just… either staring at the screen, or shopping, while staring, or knocking shit down, while staring, I just… Even before this, I’d never sleep more than 2 hours at a time, you know. Something always wakes me up. This is so weird,” he giggles, placing his hands on Bruce’s shoulders. “ _You_  kept me awake all this time, and when you finally arrived, you made use of everything you had left to put me to sleep. And for so, so,  _so long._  And you didn’t take advantage of that. Honestly, I don’t know what to think.”

“There’s nothing to think about. I ended up here because I care about you. I like seeing you’re alright.” Bruce says quietly. “And you don’t need to worry about me taking advantage. When I do it, it won’t be in front of you. You’re not gonna wake up to my corpse, so sleep all you want, for as long as you manage to keep me here.”

Joker keeps his chin stiff, despite the tremendous urge to let it tremble and just cry, yet again. He’s got enough strength to paint his favorite version of himself over whatever he’s feeling and keep it contained.

“You need to stop saying those things. It doesn’t make anything easier,” he says.

“Well, how do you imagine it ever getting easier?”

“Touché.”

“If you don’t let your guard down, if you use me to keep it up… you know, because it looks like I’m calming you. So use that whenever you want to sleep, don’t skip eating, and you just might end up holding me here for quite some time. Even if it doesn’t get easier, you’ll be fine,” Bruce says, giving the Joker his best billionaire smile. The man recognizes it and squishes his face in his hands.

“I can see you’ve practiced that, and I can certainly appreciate it.”

“You would be the first.”

“Not just in  _that_  respect, I bet.” He waggles his eyebrows, making Bruce laugh.

“We’re changing the subject?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s nothing to brag about. I  _deflowered_  you too, remember?”

“And  _how_.” He dips his fingers in Bruce’s moist, freshly washed hair. “Uh, every time I do this, your hair is wet. I need to stop blacking out so much, I’m missing out on our quality time.  Or maybe I shouldn’t wash you so often.”

“Or maybe just get a blow-dryer.” Bruce cocks his head.

“Maybe I will,” Joker purrs, ruffling the strands. “Yeah, you were the first one to fuck me, that’s for sure. I’d even say you were the first one to make me see the allure of this sorta stuff. It was pure poetry, sweetheart.”

“It did feel kind of  _poetic_.”

“Do hope it wasn’t just poetic justice.”

Bruce laughs, crooking his brow. “I  _do hope_ it didn’t feel that way?”

“No, it felt…” Joker licks his lips, looking at the ceiling. “It left me wondering if maybe I had some  _damaged goods_  you could have tapped into. Truth is, I have so many conflicting theories about my, uh…  _goods_. I really can’t tell. But I felt like…” he squeezes Bruce’s face between his palms again. “How do I even put it into words? How did you feel after our first time?”

“I don’t think that’s a good point of reference, you raped me.”

“And I bet you were rightfully offended, but how did you really feel?”

Bruce smirks, staring for longer than he’d deem necessary. “Like something that needed resolving got resolved. Like for the first time in my life I got properly looked after. I’d never had anyone be so… focused on me. It felt like I was the only thing you knew anymore. And… I loved every single minute of it.”

“So you returned the favor,” the Joker says in a strangely subdued voice. “But you were so much kinder with me than I was with you.”

“I am a kind guy. Read a paper sometime, I give to charities and everything.”

“Just tell me, why do you care?” he asks, brushing off Bruce’s quip with a mere snicker. “I would understand it if you treated me as a substitute for some chunk of grey matter that got yanked out of order, as you so deftly put it, but you don’t.”

“So, we’re getting in touch with our feelings? What does it feel like I’m treating you?”

“Like you  _see_  me… and embrace it anyway. Y’know, before you, the only person I’d ever felt so  _embraced_  with was just me.” He pouts, sticking out his lower lip.

“Well, in my case there’s just you.” Bruce chuckles. “And I would have very much liked to embrace people, but there were always conditions… with everyone, including myself. You’re the only one who wants the best I have to offer and  _swallows_  it, no questions asked.”

“What a shame the only guy wanting the best you have to offer is the worst scum this Earth has ever frothed out, eh?”

“Well, it couldn’t have been anyone else. You’re uniquely qualified for this.”

“Oh, is this a roundabout way of saying I’m the only one for you?” Joker puts his arms around him, tilting his head and bringing his face close.

“I don’t even know anymore. Possibly,” Bruce smiles, moving onwards without registering it until he feels the man’s lips on his own. Joker kisses him very eagerly, but halfway into it he ruins it with a fit of laughter.

“Bruce, it looks like we’re flirting here. What do you make of that.”

“I’m just as offended as you are.”

Joker keeps laughing, and it sounds every bit as soothing as it does deranged. His hold doesn’t slacken.

“But you don’t feel to be so,” he says, brushing his cheek against Bruce’s. “Let’s get in touch with our feelings. How are you?”

“More touchy than feely.”

“You’re not even trying anymore.”

“Nope.”

“Good. Save that energy for later. So,” Joker purrs, pressing their foreheads together. ”What do you want?”

Bruce shrugs. “What do  _you_  want?”

“You.”

“Help yourself.”  

“Can I?” Joker beams up. He’s giddy, his hands are twitchy, tightening over Bruce’s shirt, grabbing his shoulders, face, petting his hair. He looks utterly happy, even though he should know better than this. But Bruce smiling, Bruce not trying, Bruce opening up, partaking in dumb flirting, calm and sober—it makes it hard to stay grounded. “Just wait, be back in two shakes,” Joker says, leaving a long, heavy kiss on Bruce’s lips that weights them both down with hot, lazy waves of yearning for long minutes after it’s gone.

Joker disappears in the bathroom to prepare, and it gives Bruce a window to focus on what’s flying through his head. It’s not despair, nor is it the pressing urge to escape. It’s just mostly happy anticipation, and he loves it. And that’s that. He switches off any signals coming from his brain that might clash with it. He just wants to have it. The residual warmth still crawls along his lips, and he licks them, trying to take in traces of him in order to pull through another minute. Joker takes his time though, and when he finally comes back, Bruce can’t help the look he gives him. And the Joker can’t help his knees going weak.

He moves towards Bruce, not even trying to give his steps direction. The pull makes sure there’s no other way for him to go. His hands are on him, brushing down his shoulders, and he seats himself in his lap.

“I think it might be easier,” he starts, already taking a break to kiss him sweetly. “Y’know, if we moved it to the bed. What do you say.”

“Whatever you say,” Bruce murmurs, wrapped in the warmth of his arms. He doesn’t want to ask what the Joker is planning to do. He feels safe and padded against impact, and trust is the only logical outcome. He smiles at him, giving him one kiss back, smoothly moving away from his moist mouth and down his jawline, just to peck at the hickeys, appreciating his own imprint. He didn’t think it was possible, but the Joker tastes better every time he runs his tongue over his skin.

The man pulls away reluctantly after a minute or two of letting Bruce melt him into a puddle, then gets off him to bring him to his feet and guide him to the bed. It happens outside of Bruce’s awareness. It’s just something they do. Joker ties him down and removes the cuffs, throwing them to the floor with a loud clank. They don’t pay attention to it.

Bruce’s wide open eyes seek him out, trying to catch every ounce of tenderness he seems to brim with as he looks back at him. When the Joker climbs on top of him, their bodies pressed together, he senses how Bruce’s arms tense up with an unattainable wish to spring up and hold him. He wedges his own arms beneath his back and squeezes him tightly, laying a soft kiss on his lips. He tries to ignore its bitter tinge of frustration, slipped in insidiously with the way Bruce’s arms try to push into his own as much as they can, to be closer, destroy the hundredth of a millimeter’s worth of distance. His tongue sinks deeper, and Bruce’s wrists go up as high as they’re allowed, his fingertips touching the thighs that straddle him. When the embrace borders bruising, he feels Bruce smile beneath him, and suddenly the bitterness blows over. He pulls his arms from under him, moves them down his shoulders until he reaches the plaster, goes past it, trying to ignore it, and caresses his fingers. As they slowly curl around his own twitchy ones, he feels something constricting his throat, but he doesn’t stop kissing him. He imagines how it would feel to hold his hands.

Joker never could spell out to himself the allure of touching someone with any other intent than causing them pain or humiliation. With Bruce, the allure just happened. It found its point of ingress through his fists, and their blows felt so good it left him fantasizing of having his own hands all over him, or letting his punches reduce him to an ecstatic pulp of mauled nerves. He went with the first option, not knowing where it would take him, maybe hoping it would bring him the throes of the second one.

Now he’s here, reduced to a pulp of mauled nerves alright. But it’s not the fists dealing it out; it’s just those restrained fingers, the body that breathes noticeably easier when his weight is pinning it down, the mouth that pulls him in deeper with the slight stretch of its corners and the soft purr as he sends his tongue to the bottom to revel in hot sweetness.

Joker doesn’t want to name what he feels. It slipped out once, and he did move his lips in the shape of those three pesky words, but it was just spur of the moment, and it seemed like it would fit. He wants to tell Bruce so many things, but there are only so many words at his disposal. And he feels way too much for these three words to even begin to cover it.

He knows if he keeps holding on to those fingers any longer, he will have serious trouble fighting off the urge to set the man’s arms free and let them do as they please. In this instance he would have been content with Bruce just knocking him out, if it were the only thing he’d choose to do with his freedom. He wants to feel his will unleashed upon him, but the dreaded truth is that he might never fully experience it again. So he lets go and tries to tune into the quiet thrums of Bruce’s body, asking what else it needs. He slides his hands beneath his shirt and notices how pleasantly warm he’s become. Even the introductory nourishment was enough to give his blood some speed of its own.

His hands lift the shirt up, exposing the pale, scar-riddled skin, and his kiss slides down to focus on the pulsating flesh of Bruce’s neck, treading gently over the green and red bite-shaped bruises he left there the other day. He wishes there was a smooth transition for his mouth from the stubbly jaw to the rising chest, but the bunched up shirt obstructs his flow right in the middle, denying him the collarbones. Bruce seems to sense his annoyance somehow, letting out a soft chuckle between his quiet moans. The Joker’s ministrations never require much for him to get vocal about them.

“You can cut it open, I mean, you did buy this stuff in bulk. There’s enough spares,” he says.

Joker sits up, his palms resting on his chest. He seems to be struggling with a tough nut to crack, but in the end he looks back at Bruce, scrunching his face and clicking his tongue.

“We don’t have time for that.” He tightens his fists in the fabric, tearing it apart in the middle, exposing what remained off limits up until now.

“Where’s the fire?” Bruce asks with a smirk. Joker opens his mouth and knits his eyebrows, throwing him a leery look, then bucks his hips into Bruce’s. They’re both hard already.

“Right here,” he says, and the man beneath him starts cracking up with laughter.

“That was pretty ba-“ he begins, but Joker plunges back down to resume his work, grinding their mouths together. Bruce’s amusement finds its way into the kiss with his jagged little exhales, the corners of his lips still stretching. Joker would very much love just to drink it all up down to the last drop. He can sense the bliss radiating from the man, his tongue submitting willingly, his eyes closed and relaxed, and little by little it rubs off on him.

He knows all the bumps and concavities of Bruce’s body by now, but it never stops feeling like a frenzied first time whenever he runs his tongue over it. Holding his head gently in his hands, he tilts it with little effort to get better access to his neck where he leaves a few hickeys of his own, trying to aim at the yet unmarred areas of skin. Moving further downwards he devotes the following long minutes to pay attention to every square inch of Bruce’s chest. His hands slide beneath him once more to pull him up to meet his mouth, although Bruce is doing a good enough job himself, arching into him with everything he’s got left, purring, moaning, whimpering when Joker licks and sucks on his nipples and his hands tighten over his ass, the rhythm of his hips increasing steadily. The madman isn’t planning on teasing him this time. All he wants for him is just peace and comfort, delivered wrapped in the thing Bruce asked for specifically. He could do anything to let him feel it just as it is, tumbling through his veins, threatening to burst out any second.

Joker trails his kisses down Bruce’s stomach, scooting lower and lower until his face is just above the bulge in his pants. He unzips and pulls them down along with the underwear, and the mere sight of the man’s hard cock along with the knowledge he’s solely responsible for it sends a focused surge of heat to his own. He feels sweat break on his back, but he doesn’t waste time taking off his shirt. He places a series of voracious kisses all over the shaft before he takes the glistening head in his mouth and sucks slowly, feeding on Bruce’s reactions. He’s not holding back. When the man bucks his hips up to invite himself in deeper, Joker opens up, dipping his head lower, spoiling him with his pleased humming.

He spends a good minute barely moving his head, just pressing his tongue to the smooth, hot flesh in lazy circles, sucking hard, and he could never explain to himself why it feels so good. But that’s the thing with Bruce. Every last little thing about him feels too good to even try and reason with it. His breathless groans, muscles flexing beneath the Joker’s wandering palms, parted lips, eyes rolling back before his heavy eyelids fall down, scrunching in pleasure—it spurs him on, and he gives him more, bobbing up and down, wrapping his hand around the base of his cock and moving it in unison with his mouth. It only takes a moment for Bruce to start getting really loud, and then louder.

“Stop… wait. I’m gonna come,” he wheezes, the last syllable transitioning seamlessly into a moan so delicious it’s nearly impossible for the Joker to glue himself off him. But he succeeds somehow. He sits upright, tapping his twitching abs alternately with both hands.

“Hang in there, sweetheart,” he winks at him and starts unbuttoning his shirt. Bruce’s chest rises and falls out of rhythm, and the sights unveiling before his eyes with each button aren’t helping, but by the time the Joker climbs off him to take off his pants, he finally manages to catch his breath. Although the man’s gaze promises him it won’t last long. When fully naked, he straddles him, seating himself so Bruce’s cock presses against his ass. Rolling his hips to give him a little taste, he reaches for a bottle of lube he prepared earlier. He squeezes some of it on his fingers and digs his other hand into Bruce’s hair, lowering down to kiss him long and hard, smothering him with his affection while he reaches behind and starts fingering himself.

When he deems himself ready, he breaks the kiss, leaving just a couple of inches between their faces, staring as he guides Bruce’s cock inside his ass, lowering his hips until it's all in. What Bruce stares back with makes his insides churn in the most agreeable of ways, and he can tell the man hasn’t anticipated this. There’s something not yet fully explored about offering up his own body to give the other comfort that gnaws at the Joker with just as much apprehension as it does with vicious craving. But as he starts to move, bouncing up and down at a slow, shallow pace, he begins to understand it. Even though he’s not yet used to this, Bruce feels so unbearably good inside him, simply because it’s Bruce. And he would love nothing more than to give him everything, including his heart on a silver platter if he only asked.

Bruce isn’t the type to ask for everything, though. Even now, though his eyes appear barely seeing, glazed over with uncontainable lust, they’re overflowing with a certain shade of ‘you shouldn’t have’ that forces Joker’s scarred lips into a grin. The madman straightens his back, his hands trailing lazy patterns over Bruce’s sweat-slicked torso, and his hips keep rocking at a fixed tempo. It’s only getting better and better, not only because it’s  _him_  inside. He’s getting the hang of it quickly, and keeping a certain angle is enough for him to start letting out less and less scrupulous moans. He loves how Bruce’s burning gaze licks his body all over, but when their eyes lock, he notices how deep the hunger reaches, and keeping him hungry is the last thing he wants. He slides his hands up the rising chest, bending over the man, bringing himself close to his mouth.

Dipping his fingers in the dark hair, he lifts Bruce’s head up gently, holding it close as the man’s hot tongue starts grinding into his neck, sucking, sating itself. Every slow lick and every long kiss hold the Joker’s stomach in a gloriously tight, tingling grip, and it sends more fire to his hips. He moves them faster, harder, feeling the fever build up in him as the wet mouth keeps savoring him without a mote of restraint. Holding Bruce close, he seeks out his lips and rams his tongue inside to suck up the muffled moans one by one, not letting up, not letting go until he feels him come inside him. His entire body melts into him, and he senses something lift off Bruce and permeate his skin like an agonizingly pleasant current of energy, sinking in like thousands of little electric arcs, pricking, sizzling, enveloping him, and in this moment he knows exactly what Bruce feels for him, and it’s too much to take. He bites down on the rugged side of his cheek, trying to keep himself from crying in front of him yet again. Their foreheads pressed together, breathing heavily, he rocks a few more times to make sure the man is well taken care of.

Once he can tell Bruce has caught his breath, he strokes his cheek fondly and gives him a soft kiss. When he looks at him, his eyes tell him the exact same thing his body did moments ago, although his gaze quickly wanders downwards, noticing the Joker is still far from done.

“What about you?” he asks, his voice slightly hoarse from recent overuse.

“Oh, um…” Joker shrugs, pursing his lips.

“Give it here.” Bruce smiles warmly, which soon gives way to chuckling at the Joker’s conflicted expression. “Come on. I want you in my mouth,” he adds in encouragement.

The man scrambles onto his fours and moves towards Bruce’s face, planting his hands on either side of his head. When he’s close enough for him to reach, he looks down, watching him place a moist, open-mouthed kiss on the tip of his cock before he closes his lips around it and starts sucking. And he never breaks eye contact, sending even more merciless heat to his core until it starts to melt down.

Joker takes his head in both hands, holding it carefully as he pushes himself inside the welcoming wet warmth. The attention he gets from him, the lustful sounds of sucking, his quiet little purrs, and the way his tongue clings to his cock, moving against it like it’s never tasted anything better—it doesn’t take long for him to start sweating all anew, one hand gently caressing Bruce’s hair while the other one grips the headboard for purchase. He doesn’t dare to move his hips, but Bruce manages just fine, craning his neck, tilting his head to work up a steady rhythm. All of it is enough to bring the Joker over the edge within just a couple of minutes, but the biggest offender is the man’s unerring eyes, observing as he comes apart under his care. His whimpers turn into moans in seconds, and he can’t hold it in any longer, knowing Bruce’s making him come equal parts with his mouth and his lazily incendiary gaze.

He sucks up every last drop, swallows and licks his lips, looking up with a slight smile. Joker is shuddering, his muscles rendered useless, but he manages to move to Bruce’s side where he slumps down, his arm slung around his body and his face snuggled to the side of his head. He’s breathing heavily, slowly dipping his fingers into the dark locks, petting them until he manages to cool down.

“And we’ve managed to do all this before you even had your breakfast,” Bruce says, turning his head towards him.

“Please don’t be telling me to go eat right now,” Joker grunts pleadingly. The very second he utters these words, his stomach starts to growl until the other man drowns it out with laughter.

“I’m just reading the situation.”

“Smooth.” Joker puts his hands on Bruce’s naked chest and pats it, rising up, looking down at the relaxed face. “So, how was it? Out of ten?”

“Million,” Bruce says without missing a beat. Joker rolls his eyes, smacking his lips.

“Well, I am still learning. Let’s aim for your trust fund’s numbers next time, hm?”

Bruce is this close to saying ‘are you trying to kill me?’, but something tells him his choice of words might not be fortunate. So he just pulls the Joker in with his smile until the man’s draped all over him, kissing his forehead, nestling his face against his bruised neck. He’s also this close to saying out loud how desperately he wants to put his arms around him, but something tells him it would make it the opposite of easier.

Having the Joker seemingly in high spirits and actively engaging him after the deed is done is definitely new. For the first time it feels like they’ve done nothing to answer for.

It makes it fairly easy to keep things on an even keel afterwards. The following sounds and procedures of being chained up and tied down and walked and cared for fall into a certain rhythm that’s actually conducive to making up a framework Bruce can paint his image within. He wants to be on his best behavior with the Joker, present himself at his most relaxed and charming. It’s not hard at all; the man’s own charm elicits it effortlessly.

They got through another day and entered the next one. They didn’t trip once, making a point to stay within the spectrum of safe topics and creating an illusion that everything is just fine and dandy. It should be surprising that sustaining this game of make-believe doesn’t meet any hurdles, but Bruce feels there isn’t much separating them from it becoming their reality. If he weren’t tied down, if he didn’t _have a point_ — _this_  could very well become their reality.

The longer Bruce keeps their conversations alive, the harder it becomes to distance himself from him, not that it was ever easy. All of the Joker’s little mannerisms, the softer timbre in his voice when he speaks to him, how his eyes crinkle when he smiles at him, the things he says to him, the words he chooses, the tenderness that seems so eerie yet so fitting, simply because it’s aimed at him and therefore justified—all of it begins to make Bruce feel as if he simply _likes_ him, which makes it doubly unnerving. It’s easy to chalk it all up to some morbid obsession, but once it becomes actual, honest-to-god, human attraction, it’s incomputable.

But here it is, and the fatigue in his muscles deepens the longer the man sits in his lap, but he won’t say a word. A part of him needs him close. The other part needs to keep him shortsighted.

The scales of betrayal are beginning to get confused. He started out trying to betray his own resilience and will to survive in favor of his conscience, since it was the only way that appeared right in his eyes. Now, the longer he keeps up his calm façade, the more it feels like he’s betraying the Joker, and he realizes it’s not a good feeling.

But the resolve to do what needs to be done is still thinly stretched under his skin, enveloping him whole, whispering the right choices in his ear when he wants to hear it least. He still believes that resolve is the last remaining bastion of his true self, the self he recognizes, but being that self never felt easy. It was always a struggle, a certain amount of deception, yet he’s still ready to fight for it. Despite the gall rising in his stomach, he’s primed the trap in his mind, smeared it with an image of serenity and now all that he needs is an opportunity to spring it.

It comes sooner than Bruce would have hoped to. He hates how his muscles have regained strength considerably with just the few meals the Joker’s given him and the few nights of good sleep. He blames the care he’s always put into keeping himself strong, seeing as in the end it will bring him his undoing. This whole ordeal wasn’t enough to break his body down—it still wants to keep itself alive, but it looks like he’ll just have to betray that too.

The Joker is dressing him up after their shower. His pants are already on, and now it’s time for the shirt. Bruce had no problem displaying how much he enjoyed being washed by him, again, how his touch made his body react with its renewed vigor. This time they couldn’t wait until they were clean before they got dirty. Joker’s knowing hands and mouth were all over him until he came, silencing his thoughts, and the water washed away his semen, just like all the times he’d spent in the shower, fantasizing of those hands strangling the life out of him, that tongue lapping up his tears when it was over. The man kept moving against his body and got his own out of it. He whispered how the mere feel of Bruce’s skin was enough for him. He kissed him so hard, so sweetly, his lips are tingling even now.

It’s so very hard to keep the warmth in his chest corralled when he hears his voice so close. He needs to switch off the feeling as well as the thinking, he needs to just act. The trap is ready to be sprung, and it won’t hesitate given the prompt. It arrives. It’s just the slightly weaker grip over his wrist, maybe it’s because the Joker’s so relaxed in his post-coital bliss. The key goes inside the lock, it turns, leaving his arm uncuffed, ready to be stuffed inside a sleeve. Joker doesn’t get to do that; the arm slips out of his hold the second it’s free and elbows him in the face, then the plastered hand blasts into the back of his skull, driving his head into the tiled wall, smashing it against it with enough force for him to black out. He slumps to the floor.

There’s a hollow pain in Bruce’s gut as he looks at what he’s done. But he keeps himself busy, trying to get a hold of the key despite the plaster. It’s impossible, it’s too small and his hands are too shaky. He strikes the wall several times until it crumbles, still held together by the gauze wrapped around it, but it gives his fingers some more leeway. He can grab the key and use it, and so he sets all of his limbs free. And he begins to walk, run away.

“Freeze.”

With all his haste, he’s only managed to step one foot outside the bathroom. He stops, but he doesn’t turn around. The voice is hoarse and underscored with throaty laughter.

“Never figured I’d get to say that. Does make you feel kinda  _righteous_. Oh, the rush.” Bruce hears how the Joker grunts picking himself up off the floor, how he bumps into the wall, trying to catch his balance. Cold sweat is trickling down his back. His right hand tightens in a fist over the crumbs of plaster. “Good thing we haven’t gotten you started on proteins yet, dear. Look at me,” the madman says. Bruce skips a few beats before he slowly turns to oblige him. He can’t look him in the eye. “I said, look at me.” Somehow, his voice is far from coercive. It’s strung tight and tired. Still, Bruce listens. The sight of him knocked out is still burning on his retinas, but now he appears only a little hazed.  He’s got the gun primed.

“You went soft on me, huh? Not as strong yet as you’d like?” he snickers. “Or am I just a tough customer?”

“Could be both,” Bruce whispers, his eyes now unable to look anywhere but at him. He’s not sure what he sees yet.

“Your jewelry is right over there.”  Joker moves his chin in the walking cuffs’ direction. They’re on the floor by the wall, chains glistening with a promise of safety. “Put it on for me, would ya.”

But Bruce is frozen in place. His thinking has flat-lined, and the only thing he recognizes among all this emptiness is shame. Even though what the Joker stares on with isn’t disappointment, he feels he’s let him down significantly. It’s laughable how even now he piles all the guilt on himself.

Joker doesn’t hasten him; he sees very well Bruce isn’t proud of himself. And he sees how it holds his mind in its stupefying grip.

“It’s alright. Really,” he tells him, although there are screams fighting to punch out of his throat. He forces his face to relax and smile. “Just put it on and let’s go get you some breakfast.”

Finally, Bruce starts to move towards the cuffs. It feels so wrong to be able to walk freely, move his hands naturally with each step. Although there is something tangled in all the thick strands of regret. There’s the guy the Joker told him is the  _real_  him.  _He_  loved smashing his head into the wall. Maybe not so much the act of hurting him, but moving his body to exercise his agency over him felt glorious.  

“Can I put on my shirt first?” he asks quietly, not looking.

“Go ahead,” comes the curt response.

Bruce slides the shirt down his head, and then he threads his arms through the sleeves. Moving feels great, says  _that_  guy. He silences him with the snap of metal rings around his ankles and wrists. Slowly, he turns to face the Joker and show him how good he’s been, earning himself an approving smile. He sees it’s quite tight around the edges.

“Okay, you can go back to your chair now.”

 _His_  chair. As he drags his feet back to it, he starts to feel a budding seed of resentment. He needs to seat himself quickly for it to go away, or so he hopes. He tries with all his might not to hold on to it. When the Joker chains him down, he breathes a little easier. The man takes a few steps away, standing in front of him.

“Given the circumstances, it might be a bad idea, but yeah, today we’re getting you back on proteins,” he says flatly. There’s a reddened area covering his temple, soon to bloom purple and green from the impact. Seeing it makes Bruce’s insides churn, but he’s loathe to notice it’s not all bad churning. It is a proof of his agency, however brief it was. He gulps at the thought of food, further worsening his anguish. He doesn’t want to be hungry.

But the Joker disappears in the kitchen anyway, not caring of what he does or doesn’t want. He brings him another salad, but this one seems to have beans in it. It looks good. It smells good. He seats himself in Bruce’s lap again, trying to give his movements softness despite the crazed tension accumulated in his muscles. He even manages to smile as he brings the fork up to the man’s mouth, waiting, but nothing happens. Bruce won’t take it. Joker doesn’t do anything, sitting there with the fork hanging in the air for a good minute.

“What’s wrong?” he finally asks.

“I don’t want it.”

Joker swallows something down. He takes a deep breath, but his eyes are losing the veneer of calm affection.

“Not hungry? Or don’t want to eat?” he accentuates both options with an ominous lilt. Bruce doesn’t care.

“I don’t want to eat.”

The madman puts the fork in the bowl and places the salad on the chair next to them. He looks back at him, pursing his lips, and then digs his fingers in his hair. A few beats pass, filled with soundless screaming. Bruce can see it vibrating in his eyes. He feels his grip tighten, pulling slowly at the strands.

“Bruce. If you’re not going to eat, I’m going to stuff a tube down your throat and feed you anyway. Don’t make this harder,” he tells him in monotone. Bruce withstands the weight of his gaze.

“Then it’s gonna be all on you.”

“What?”

“You know damn well  _what_ ,” he sneers. The look Joker gives him freezes the breath in his lungs. “I don’t want to get my strength back,” he hears himself whisper, just between the two of them.

***

It’s been three days since things took on a different note. It wasn’t clear whose defeat it meant, but Bruce ended up accepting food from the Joker, allowing his body to gain the dreaded strength. With each passing hour he can feel it oozing through his veins, rising up his neck, giving his thoughts intrusive clarity. It talks over him.

There’s noise growing in his head and tingling restlessness in his limbs, hour after hour, eclipsing his waking state where everything is steeped in resentment. It’s no seedling anymore. Staying immobile takes its toll, even with his walking sessions. The Joker hasn’t attempted to have sex with him ever since the _incident._ Probably trying to keep his senses razor-sharp, and Bruce won’t dare to ask, even though his nearly constant touch exacerbates everything.

Joker still holds him in his sleep and looks after every aspect of Bruce’s life, including the time when he finally had to go take a shit. At least he averted his gaze. And at least he agreed not to plaster in all of Bruce’s fingers anew when it was time to fix what was broken, just focusing on making yanking out his thumb impossible and leaving him some more dexterity. He could wipe himself quite easily that way. It wasn’t exactly humiliating. He knew the Joker had cleaned him himself the first time, and it doesn’t get much worse than that as far as debasing goes, but it doesn’t stop the resentment from growing. It’s hard to decide what it’s fueled with. Is it that relentless conviction there’s just one way to finish it all, frothing over having no means to do so? Is it the anger of captivity? Just the physiological truth that lack of control over your own movements and bodily functions breeds only rage?

It’s growing, regardless of its origin, hour after neverending hour, until it slowly tips the scales in favor of emotion over rationality. It’s getting more and more difficult to appear calm before the Joker, especially now that there doesn’t seem to be way Bruce could dull his vigilance. He sees the Joker’s own resentment clear as day, how it’s rippling in the muscles of his face when he tries to smile, how it drags its net over his eyes.

Bruce can’t tell what time it is, but it finally feels like something’s long overdue. Whatever he was hearing is now is drowned out by the sound of his own blood as it’s rushing through his body, grating at it from the inside with smothered rage. His muscles are twitching. He’s just had another meal, but the Joker’s been neglecting eating himself, and Bruce won’t remind him anymore. It’s also obvious the man hasn’t slept in days. He’s trying to be pleasant though, but his affection is now rationed out, nothing like the full-tilt barrage he had for Bruce in the beginning. The tension is nearly palpable and it’s about to crest.

Now, the Joker is seated in his lap, as usual, and he tries to stroke Bruce’s cheek, but he  twists his head away. It’s a first. The silence freezes them both for a minute until the Joker draws his hand back and cants his neck to catch Bruce’s gaze. He notices the sizzling anger and a great deal of pain that just can’t help it anymore but spill from underneath.

“Please don’t touch me,” Bruce says, avoiding his eyes.

“Okay,” the Joker sighs and fumbles with his fingers. There’s more coming, he knows it, and he knows damn well he’s not ready for it. He never will be.

“I need you to get off me.”

He leaves Bruce’s lap without a note of complaint, just standing in front of him with his shoulders hunched and his stare overcast. He watches his chest rise fast for a few seconds until his breath finally evens out, but the involuntary twitching is still there, as if his muscles couldn’t contain the rage. He sees how his jaw clenches and unclenches and how his eyes have an oddly dry glitter. His own head is filled with white noise.

“I remember how you said you wanted to make me happy. This… isn’t  _happy_ ,” Bruce begins. He swallows and clears his throat. “I can’t be tied down any longer. I _can’t._ And even if you were to start desensitizing me with fucking again, it won’t work. You’re gonna need to stuff that tube down my throat, stuff a catheter in my dick and keep me chained to the bed full time, you know, because I will get bratty, I will toss, and I will scream, I will bite you and I will resist you with everything I have.” His voice is trembling, and the Joker sees he’s not putting a whole lot of premeditation into his words. “And how is  _that_  happy?”

“Uh, you do sound kinda bratty,” the Joker says calmly, but he’s anything but.

“And I can see how sick of it you are. Of  _all_  of this. And it’s only gonna get worse. You need to let me go.”

“No.”

His answer is as automatic and unhearing as the smile that accompanies it.

“Then you’re gonna sentence me to a lifetime of being confined to a bed, fully immobilized, unresponsive? I will make you do that to me. I won’t do anything but hurt you.”

Bruce watches as the Joker brings his hands to his scarred face, hiding it. Then, he slides his fingers in his hair and starts pulling on it, his eyes clenched, but he keeps taking deep, even breaths.

“You’ve finally arrived at that... place.”

“I have.”

Joker finally looks at him, detached and absent. There’s something screaming inside Bruce to just shut up, say it was only a bluff, that he would  _never_ do this to him, to tell him to come back so he can lean into his hug, lift his face up for his kisses, say that he’s gonna be good and _please stop looking at me like that_. It’s not loud enough.

“Let me go.”

Joker keeps staring. His eyes seem hollow, and it appears to Bruce like he’s gone into a state of shock. Still, he makes the first step towards him, then another, and another, and then he kneels at his feet and sets them free. Then, he rights himself, and everything happens so slowly, and every single crease of his clothing and creak of wooden floorboards is burning itself into Bruce’s memory as he walks around him to stick the key in the cuffs around his wrists with a metallic clink. He stays behind him, and Bruce doesn’t get up even though he’s unfettered now. The blunt guilt weights him down.

“Then you better be on your way, Brucey,” the Joker says. His voice is soft and even. “I am sick of this, you’re right. Go. Go, go, go.”

Bruce slowly gets up from the chair and takes a few steps towards the door. He stops for a moment to turn around. The air seems dense and it’s so hard to move in it, so hard to take it in his lungs, it’s like drowning. Joker is just standing there, over  _his_  chair, not looking at him, his gaze unseeing, pointed at something distant. It’s time to go, so he keeps walking, counting the footfalls, until he arrives at the precipice and turns the doorknob. He can open it just fine with his less restrained hand. He won’t try to bang the plaster away until he’s sure the Joker can’t hear it. Forcing himself not to look back, he steps out and closes the door behind himself.

The corridor looks derelict, and the rows of doors on either side seem like they hold nothing but emptiness, even if they’re still occupied. No one would live here to simply live. This looks like one of many condemned tenements of this city, where people would come to spend the last of their days, like animals in the wild developing a consensus which meadow they would pick as their dying ground. He walks, flanked with indifference on either side, until he reaches the door leading to the staircase. He’s on the second floor. Each step down gives his muscle a little more oxygen, and it’s out of place, but he feels so good, just being able to cover this kind of distance on his own, to move his legs and arms without the gun looking after him. A twist of bitterness grabs his guts in its hold, and he knows damn well how much he wants to crawl back into the gun’s reach. He smashes it away along with the plaster as he blasts his hands into the wall on the ground level. It feels good. He can pick out the pieces and pull the gauze off once it’s all crushed. He’s free, finally free to kill himself.

But first, he walks. He walks for hours, exhausting himself, slinking down the city and avoiding recognition as best as he can. The stubble and his less than perfect, too long hair make it so easy not to be taken for Bruce Wayne, especially now that it’s already dark. He’s not trying to get anywhere in particular, passing unconscious winos, the distant screaming, some guy who tried mugging him but gave up when he just moved past him, bumping into his knife-wielding arm. It’s easy to see he’s not carrying anything resembling a wallet, and there are other people out there who are. He’s left alone, not worth killing over nothing.

The silence in his head shields him until he arrives at his shipping yard. The gate is unlocked, probably left that way with the Joker’s intrusion. He marches straight to the place he was taken from, inhaling the brisk air.

The motion sensors provide him with scant light as he walks along the wharf. Then, he notices it. The gun is still here; the Joker must have simply discarded it, too consumed with maneuvering Bruce’s unconscious weight into his car. It’s lying on the ground, waiting for him, beckoning at him with a dim metallic glint. He approaches it and bends down to pick it up, its heaviness and temperature oddly comforting in his hand. But he doesn’t put it to his head or in his mouth just yet. For now he’s content just looking, enjoying his freedom to simply feel its texture or run his fingers down its every ridge and indentation.

He looks up at the distant lights, and then further up to see if the stars are visible, but the sky is strewn with thin clouds, and there’s only the blurred crescent moon. He realizes he’s cold. And the inside of his head is filled with buzzing softness. Killing himself is present in his thoughts like faded print, still holding its meaning but barely legible, even though he stands here with the gun in his hand. The fact he’s cold is so much easier for him to read. He puts the safety on, sticks it behind his waistband and directs his steps to one of the crates—the one that hides the elevator leading to his base. He keeps some clothes down there. He’s not thinking at all, he’s just acting. He wants to grab a jacket, even though he’s about to die soon after putting it on. There’s no reflection on the absurdity of it; he’s cold, so he’s going to get himself something warm. It doesn’t matter.

As the elevator descends and the ceiling lights come on row by row, he takes in the soothing smell of steel and gasoline, and he looks at the living quarters he made for himself. There’s a military cot and a duffel bag filled with clothes and toiletries. The charger he was using for the phone the Joker gave him is still plugged in, but the device it used to feed is long gone. He walks up to the bag and kneels next to it, rummaging through various items of clothing until he finds a plain black jacket. He puts it on, and his eyes cut to the shoe box he brought here many weeks ago. It contains all the remnants of his memories, the pictures, the arrowhead he and Rachel found in his garden. Looking at it switches his thinking back on. The gun he feels pressing against his lower back earns itself a voice. It tells him he can go die now. They're all out there, and their disappointment is waiting for him. His muscles won’t cramp up as he squeezes the trigger, he’s gonna be warm enough for that. There’s no reason he can’t die with his jacket on.

But that voice has a hard time reaching him, trying to trudge its way through the thick, tingling hash taking up all the space inside his skull. Still, Bruce gets up on his feet and advances back to the elevator, returning to ground level and retracing his steps all the way to the waterside. He’s in the right place, he’s got the right tool and the right choice at the tips of his fingers, ready to be executed.

He holds the gun in his hand, but his body seems to have forgotten how to bring his arm up and bend the elbow. The grey fuzziness keeps enveloping his brain, and he feels an odd paralyzing lightness in all his limbs. The city lights merge into an amalgamate of indefinite shapes before his unseeing eyes. He doesn’t sense his grip over the gun. The moon remains a certain constant in his field of vision, but not for long. Suddenly, he realizes it’s on the opposite side of the sky and that he’s been standing here for hours.

A sliver of awareness burrows into his mind, and he realizes how exhausted his legs are, from all the walking, from all the standing. He needs to sit down. Looking over his shoulder, he sees the crate he emerged from so long ago. He paces to it and sits down, resting his back against its corrugated side. For a second there, he forgot what he was going to do. He just acted on the need to let his legs rest. He forgot the gun in his hand, but it’s still here, its feel ingrained into his skin so deep he doesn’t even acknowledge it anymore. And it doesn’t seem like he’s going to do anything about it, but it doesn’t matter. Not yet. His head is still filled with cushioning noise.

The sky takes on a greyish tint, and he sees it’s starting to dawn, but he can’t bring himself to feel anywhere about it. He knows he’s still alive, and that he shouldn’t be. But his elbow won’t bend.

Then, he notices something out the corner of his eye. He knows the weight of that gaze on his skin, and when he turns his head, he sees him. His hair disheveled, shoulders hunched, arms hanging heavily along his sides. It’s still too dark to make out the details, but there’s no doubt the Joker’s come for him once more. Bruce doesn’t stir, unable to force his muscles into a mere twitch. But there is warmth that blooms in the pit of his stomach, and it grows, and keeps on growing with every step the man takes in his direction until he’s standing in front of him, against the backdrop of Gotham’s foggy skyline. Bruce can’t quite make out his face yet, the sunlight is still too scant.

“I figured, you know,” the Joker starts. His voice is barely audible, as if worn out with hours of screaming. “Since you said you wouldn’t do this in front of me… I figured if I just stick around…”

“You took your time,” Bruce hears the words leaving his mouth.

“Look who’s talking, mister ‘gonna off myself the second I'm outta here’,” Joker chuckles and drags his feet until he’s at Bruce’s side. He kneels down, resting his hands on his left forearm. “Uh, that came out wrong. Don’t pay any mind to me, you’re doing great.” He pats it. “No, I came here to tell you something,” he keeps speaking in a hoarse staccato. “You know, I remember how you told me you don’t want any grasps to str… scratch that. Rewind. You don’t want any straws to grasp at. You said that. But I have a real kicker for you.”

Bruce keeps looking at him, and as the sunlight keeps encroaching into their little space, he sees what he’s done to himself. His face is covered in bruises, and there are several patches of clotted blood where tufts of his hair used to be. It wrings his guts and forces the thick mist out of his head, but he can’t get his voice to work through the tightness in his throat. He can only stare and listen.

“What if you turned me in? I mean, it would make everything you’ve been through so much more meaningful,  _justified_. Look, you’ve suffered so much just to goad this  _monster_  into giving himself up. And I’m giving myself up, Bruce, I’m done. You’ve done it, mazel tov, the Joker is no more. I want you to call Gordon this instant and rasp into that phone that you have apprehended the bastard. I wanna hear it. I want you to cuff me and watch me being taken away, lights a’flashin’, sirens a’blarin. I want you to be proud. See, it wasn’t all for nothing. You got the world rid of this blight. Here.” He grabs Bruce’s free hand and stuffs a pair of cuffs in it, wrapping the man’s fingers around the metal rings. Then, he reaches into his pocket and produces a cell phone, waving it, then extending it towards him. “You let go of that gun and grab it, Bruce, take it, make that call. Make yourself proud. Make your dad proud. You deserve this. You don’t deserve to die, you’ve done nothing wrong, remember? It was all me, I messed with your head, I did it to you, all those dirty, unspeakable things. All me. And now you need to get your own back.”

Bruce doesn’t let go of the gun, though. His gaze is still glued to the Joker’s maltreated face, and the clearer his head gets, the deeper sinks the sting of a new kind of pain. It’s redolent of guilt, but this guilt feels refreshing. It’s redeemable. It’s not sprouting off the cadaverous images of all the people he’s failed, etched into his mind forever, like indifferent gravestone inscriptions. This one is still alive.

He drops the cuffs to the ground and grabs the phone from the Joker’s hand, putting it next to the coiled chains. Then, he smiles, looking into his bloodshot eyes. He shifts a little for his arm to get better momentum as it slings the gun into the water. When it hits the surface, he falls back against the crate, watching the splash. Seems like every time he decides to throw his past life away, he needs to toss a gun in that river.

He feels the Joker’s hold over his forearm tighten, then slacken, then his entire body seems to grow limp, leaning against his side.

“That’s littering,” the madman says.

“If I turned you in, you’d just escape anyway. Probably kill a few dozen people in the process. No, it’s better if I just keep an eye on you myself,” Bruce says and trains his eyes on the Joker’s, seeing tears glisten along his bottom eyelids, but they won’t break out. “Did you do that to yourself?” he asks, pointing at the bruises and the bloody spots mottling his scalp.

“ _Duh._ ” Joker’s voice seems hollow and distant even in this petulant instance. Bruce puts his hand over the ones perched on his forearm. Finally, he can touch him. The euphoria starts screaming down his veins as he moves the hand upwards, rubbing some warmth into his arm. The Joker is so cold, not just because of the morning chill. He hasn’t slept, he hasn’t eaten in days, and Bruce watched it happen. It was his fault. But he has a chance to redeem himself.

“Come here,” he says, sweeping the cuffs and the phone away, making space between his legs. Joker stares silently before he finally moves, crawling into it, but he doesn’t rest against him, even when the man takes off his jacket to put it around his shoulders nor when he places his hands on his sides, coaxing him to get closer. He just sits there, his head turned to Bruce, his eyes overflowing with all the things he could never name and the still apparent state of shock. Finally, he softens, lets himself be dragged in, his back pressed to Bruce’s chest. He's wrapped in his tight embrace, his warmth is seeping into his body, closing around him like world’s most efficacious binds. He’s trapped. He feels Bruce’s mouth move against his ear in the shape of those three words, and the tears finally flow. He turns to look at him and his face contorts with a sudden onslaught of violent sobbing. He tucks his head against Bruce’s shoulder, feeling his arms fix the jacket over his back and wrap around him, squeezing hard.

Bruce starts rocking gently to still the crying, but it doesn’t seem to have an end. But it’s alright, they have time. The mist rolling over the surface of Gotham River is only starting to dissipate. They have all the time in the world.

 


End file.
